Philip Lopez is known to his friends as Tom. He’s an artist whose work is at once a reduction of three dimensions into two and a master of working textures in to his paintings by layers of overpainting and removal by a variety of means. Think of that you see out of the corner of your eye as you drive by a building then flattened and abstracted
We bought Little Crook which I learned was inspired by Tom aka Philip’s chicken house. That seems appropriate since I’ve started some of my better poems recently in a small building in a chickenyard out on Peter Kramer and Susan Gladen’s farm.

Michele Natale describes Philip aka Tom’s show this way:

Substantial abstract and semi-abstract paintings on wood panels display richly colored, highly worked surfaces, layered, squeegeed or abraded by sanding, then divided into compositional compartments by roughly gouged lines. Painted areas are sometimes contrasted with areas cut from metal plates, nailed into the panel. Ovoid forms reminiscent of eggs or pods, and even a vaguely floral motif find their way into the geometry of this intriguing body of work.